This topic will be used to discuss all things Bitcoin and cryptocurrency related.

Bitcoin miners flood Bangkok computer expo
Thousands flocked to a computer expo over the weekend to snatch up components to mine online money.

The craze, which led to a nationwide shortage of key computer hardware followed a spike of interest in cryptocurrency – digital money unregulated by any central bank or federal reserve. The most famous among them is Bitcoin, which currently trades at about 92,000 baht per unit, nearly three times its value just three months ago.

Veerachai Morprapaipan, whose store sold components for mining such money at the expo, said he lost count of the customers and people who visited his booth at Queen Sirikit Convention Center to inquire about Bitcoin and other types of cryptocurrency.

“There were so many customers. I still get questions even today,” Veerachai, who runs TH Miner, said by phone on Monday.

Held every three to four months, Commart expo usually attracts gamers and computer geeks who look to buy or upgrade their rigs at a discounted price. But at the latest Commart, which ran Thursday to Sunday, many of those geeks turned into prospectors who clamored to buy digital “shovels” for a digital gold mine.

Said “shovel” is a component called a Graphic Processing Unit, or GPU. It’s the part that makes videogames run with such spectacular graphics and texture details. It can also be used to increase computers’ capacities to generate cryptocurrency.

To sum it up in the simplest of terms, the more GPUs a computer has, the faster it can mine the cryptocurrency – and the more money a user can make – which led to the GPU buying rampage at Commart.

“I’m buying as many pieces as I can get my hand on,” Niratcha Sukyu said as she waited in line to buy GPUs with scores of other modern-day prospectors.

Another man in the line, who only gave his name as Nont, said he was hoping to buy GPUs to experiment with cryptocurrency mining, having heard about it from a friend.

“A friend I know told me about it so I came today to buy equipment and give it a try,” said Nont, 27.

One miner, who identified himself only as Karat, said he first got into the business of mining cryptocurrency in 2014, when one Bitcoin traded for 15,000 baht. He said he eventually quit because of the low return and sold what he had mined. At its peak in May, one Bitcoin was valued at about 99,000 to 100,000 baht.

“The best kind of insight is hindsight,” Karat said with a laugh. He said he’s back in the game, and he visited Commart to buy more GPUs for his operation.

Is anyone active in this pursuit and if so, care to tell us all the in's and out's of the process and what success you've had? I and I'm sure many of us are at a total loss concerning the entire subject. Pete

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Even if Bitcoin mining is still possible, you would want to wait until after August 1st before considering it.
I think now you can only mine smaller Alt-coins, and even then you need a proper rig with numerous powerful GPU's, you can't just do it on a regular computer anymore and make it worthwhile.

Have looked into it yes. You're probably too late now, Bitcoin is finite so each transaction on the blockchain is exponentially harder to mine than the previous. To do it today you'd need at least six high end graphics cards (costing over 10k each - computer hardware is expensive in Thailand), then you need to cool the rig and have a stable power supply. You won't make enough to offset the cost of the rig and the electricity bill.

Ethereum is probably a better mining option as it is still in its relative infancy (compared to Bitcoin), but you still need a powerful rig to make anything off it.

To be honest you'd be better off just trading in cyrptocurrencies which you can do here: www.coinbase.com

BITCOIN’S UPS AND DOWNS DOESN’T DETER DIGITAL MINERS IN THAILAND
A month ago, when it was trading at 96,000 baht per unit, bitcoin was the digital currency that launched a thousand geeks to snatch up equipment at a computer expo to “mine” it.

Since then, its value has steadily dropped, plummeting as low as 80,000 baht this week. Its decline has also dragged other major cryptocurrencies along with it. Ethereum – the second most popular cryptocurrency in Thailand – once traded at 13,000 baht. It fell to 9,100 baht last week before plunging to 6,400 baht by Tuesday.

Naturally, the tumble unnerves some miners.

“I just started mining three days ago, but now i’m starting to have doubt in my heart,” one user lamented in an online forum for cryptocurrency miners. “I should just deposit my 100,000 baht in the bank. I wouldn’t have to worry if I could get anything back from this 100,000 baht in the next 10 months.”

The user, Krisorn Wijky, wrote Monday that he only made 1,200 baht mining cryptocurrency for the last three days.

But despite the fluctuating value of the so-called cryptocoins in recent weeks, prospectors who profit from it in Thailand said they are still confident in their mining operation, while experts believe the shortfall is only temporary, and the technology behind it even has the potential to forever change the future of banking in the country.

“Every investment has its risks,” Bhume Bhumiratana, an Information Technology, or IT, consultant and observer of the cryptocurrency business, said by phone Wednesday. “We can never look at it in a short term. It must go through ups and downs, stable and unstable. But personally I believe in the long term it’s a technology that can benefit us.”

Although cryptocurrency has been around for some years now, its popularity only soared in Thailand toward May, when bitcoin skyrocketed and peaked at 100,000 baht per unit. The same month also saw the worldwide infection of a ransomware that demanded payment in bitcoin, further pushing its visibility to the mainstream media.

Bitcoin remains the household name of cryptocurrency and is the most prominent. Nearly half of the world’s cryptocoins are in bitcoin, and its market cap is estimated at USD 41 billion. But others such as ethereum, litecoin, zcash and ripple are also popular.

Agree with most of the above. Mining crypto-currencies is definitely a good idea but there are a few hurdles in the way. Worth mentioning is that to do it realistically requires a good rig that might cost several/many thousand $US to set up, plus most folks that do it, mine in a group as it's faster and more profitable as Bitcoins etc. are subject to being fragmented to smaller pieces. Also, you have to look at the cost of of your rig being online, all the time, and the electricity that it uses. This is another reason people mine in groups as this can be an issue.

There are other digital currencies than Bitcoin that might be a better option but you do need to square-it-away properly, research and invest in a decent rig.

There is definitely a future in it but you need to read up and get informed on the situation as it's not just a buy a decent PC and off you go. A decent PC crypto-currency mining set up that allows you to make money out of it all working with other might cost 7-10k $ dollar tbh.

Also, you have to remember how volatile these currencies are regarding exchange rates with standard currencies, it's good now, but that can change fast.

I've looked into it too and you also have to consider your local government's attitude towards it [digital currencies] and also that your wallet can be hacked and a few other things too.

If you are dedicated to it and set up a good rig that can help sort out the math problems with the notion that it's the long term thing etc....then fine. But much to consider tbh.

Don't read beauty magazines...they will only make you feel ugly - Baz Lerman

Thailand’s Largest Bank to Launch New FinTech Blockchain Platform
Thailand’s largest bank by revenue, Kasikornbank Pcl, has unveiled that it is planning to introduce a new FinTech platform by the end of the year as it attempts to prevent fee income from its rival banks.

In a report from Bloomberg, Kattiya Indaravijaya, one of the four presidents at the Bangkok-based company, said that the goal was to produce faster, easier and lower-cost online banking transactions. There are also talks with overseas companies to create the digital payments platform.

According to information from the Bank of Thailand, Thai mobile and Internet banking transactions increased by 26 percent between April and September in 2016.

In recent months, FinTech in Thailand has been ramping up as it embraces the technology that other countries are getting involved with.

At the end of last month, a new report came out that illustrated that there will be a sweeping adoption of blockchain technology in a number of areas including finance within Thailand by 2018.

An increase in adoption can already be seen with a number of blockchain projects taking shape. A successful remittance pilot in November saw more than 100 migrant workers sending money to their homeland, Myanmar, using the Ethereum blockchain.

In the past, Thailand has been averse to the adoption of bitcoin. So much so, that the Bank of Thailand has issued several statements as to their feelings on the digital currency.

Yet, while the bank has certainly taken a cautionary view of the currency in the past, it seems that the country is keen to embrace its underlying distributed ledger, the blockchain. Not surprising consider the technology is experiencing an increase within many sectors around the world.

The country certainly has a long way to go compared to the likes of London, Singapore, or New York, but the fact that its benefits are being realized now could mean that the country may end up becoming a hub for the technology in the future.

Thailand's KBank to Start Digitizing Contracts With Blockchain by 2018
One of Thailand's largest commercial banks is looking to digitize some of its financial contracts through a new blockchain solution developed with IBM.

Kasikorn Bank, or KBank, revealed today that it wants to move away from paper-based letters of guarantee – which are commonly issued by banks to ensure the delivery of certain types of securities – to a wholly digital format.

The process won't happen overnight, though. According to KBank, the plan involves digitizing 35 percent of the total amount of these contracts it generates by the end of next year. For a sense of the scale, KBank said that it expects to issue as much as $9 billion in letters of guarantee during that time.

Of those, 5 percent will be executed on the blockchain-powered platform, which uses the Hyperledger Fabric software as a basis. And looking ahead, KBank wants to find other partners that would use the platform.

LONDON: Bitcoin and other "cryptocurrencies" are big money, virtually as big as Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc combined.

The price of a single bitcoin hit an all-time high of above $3,500 this week, dragging up the value of hundreds of newer, smaller digital rivals in its wake. Now some investors fear a giant crypto-bubble may be about to burst.

It has been a year of unprecedented growth for the largely unregulated market, with dozens of new currencies appearing every month in "Initial Coin Offerings" or ICOs. They have achieved value almost instantly, drawing in those who are eager to get in and make a quick buck.

At the start of 2017, the total value -- or market cap -- of all cryptocurrencies in existence was about $17.5 billion, with bitcoin making up almost 90% of that, according to industry data firm CoinMarketCap.

It is now around $120 billion -- around the same value as Goldman and RBS together -- and bitcoin makes up only 46%.
Bitcoin Cash, a clone of bitcoin that was split off from the original last week by a rival group of developers, was valued at more than $12 billion less than 24 hours after it had started trading.

"It's just created new value out of nowhere," said Rob Moffat, a partner at Balderton Capital, a London-based venture capital firm who focuses on fintech. "There's no fundamentals behind any of this Balderton Capital it's all based on public perception, so you can start to see some really strange phenomena."

Cryptocurrencies Balderton Capital so-called because cryptography is used to keep transactions secure Balderton Capital allow anonymous peer-to-peer transactions between individual users, without the need for banks or central banks.

They use blockchain technology, a shared record-keeping and processing system that means digital money cannot be copied and spent more than once.

Billionaire US investor Howard Marks likens the market to the dotcom bubble of the turn of the century -- whose demise he predicted.

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There are going to be some burnt fingers with this!

May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil know`s you`re dead!

" “Why does it actually have value?” The two-word answer is one most economists are familiar with: network effect. The network effect is a lovely piece of jargon that refers to the quite commonsense statement that networked products and services tend to have more value when more people use them. The most common example is the telephone. During its early days when few people had access to telephones their utility, and therefore their value, were minimal. Today practically everyone has a phone, so its utility and value is so high as to be unquestionable. In this way the value of Bitcoin is directly tied to the number of its users and the frequency of their use."

The monetary value of a phone hasn't risen with it's number of users or frequency of use though so I'm still not convinced by the argument.

The physical unit may not have, but take into account the monetary value of the entire industry; smartphones, hardware, software, apps, advertising, etc. It has come a long way since its inception and nearly everyone on the planet has one. I think the article was making that comparison with Bitcoin, its value will increase as more people adopt and use it.

Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? - Hunter S Thompson